Objective Pain Stimulation Intensity and Pain Sensation Assessment Using Machine Learning Classification and Regression Based on Electrodermal Activity

Abstract

An objective measure of pain remains an unmet need of people with chronic pain, estimated to be 1/3 of the adult population in the US. The current gold standard to quantify pain is highly subjective, based upon self-reporting with numerical or visual analog scales (VAS). This subjectivity complicates pain management and exacerbates the epidemic of opioid abuse. We have tested classification and regression machine learning models to objectively estimate pain sensation in healthy subjects using electrodermal activity (EDA). Twenty-three volunteers underwent pain stimulation using thermal grills. Three different "pain stimulation intensities" were induced for each subject, who reported the "pain sensation" right after each stimulus using a VAS (0-10). EDA data were collected throughout the experiment. For machine learning, we computed validated features of EDA based on time-domain decomposition, spectral analysis, and differential features. Models for estimation of pain stimulation intensity and pain sensation achieved maximum macro-averaged geometric mean scores of 69.7% and 69.2%, respectively, when three classes were considered ("No," "Low," and "High"). Regression of levels of stimulation intensity and pain sensation achieved R2 values of 0.357 and 0.47, respectively. Overall, the high variance and inconsistency of VAS scores led to lower performance of pain sensation classification, but regression was better for pain sensation than stimulation intensity. Our results provide that three levels of pain can be quantified with good accuracy, and physiological evidence that sympathetic responses recorded by EDA are more correlated to the applied stimuli's intensity than to the pain sensation reported by the subject.